Strong Body, Strong Mind: What Your Workout Is Missing

Our fitness editor explores movement through her senses, peeling back the exercise experience layer by layer.

Arch . . . and curl. I follow these directions, rolling my spine like a wave under the gentle coo of Susan Gaines, a Minneapolis-based trainer who specializes in the Gyrotonic Method, a machine-based practice composed of spiraling, rhythmic movements.

I arch my back as I lean forward, opening my arms until they can go no farther. Only then do I curl my body over itself, drawing my head down and bellybutton in — so far that it feels as though the front of my body were leading me backward, like a point in the current pulling back out to sea.

“I feel like my guts are on fire,” I share hesitantly. I’m searching for a sensory experience called interoception — a lesser-known sense that refers to the perception of internal bodily sensations — and I wonder if I’m confusing it with a simple rise in body temperature.

But Susan’s eyes light up: “I often think of it like a pilot light clicking on,” she says.

I’m on the right track, but the so-called eighth sense is hard to grasp.

When I first began exercising, the primary sense I used was sight. I watched videos, group fitness instructors, and fellow exercisers — any chance I got to study someone who seemed to know how to move. Fitness was a choreographed dance, and I was hyperaware that I didn’t know the moves. So I stared and I copied.

In other words, I was a creep — albeit a well-intentioned one.

After some time, I began paying attention to how exercises felt. My primary sense became touch, literally how the movements and implements and environment felt. This included proprioception — a deeper attunement to the body’s muscles and joints that dictates body awareness in space — and vestibular sense, which relates to balance and coordination.

As I paid more attention to feeling, my performance improved. Paying attention to my muscles boosted my form and increased my strength. It also upped my confidence. I still sought out instruction for new exercises, but I relied less on others to show the way before I was willing to move.

It was over coffee last year that Susan first mentioned interoception.

“It’s a tuning in to the nuances of sensation that we experience from our internal organs out through our muscles and skin,” she explained.

Sensing . . . with our organs?

I’d never heard of such a thing, and I immediately felt sheepish for thinking that honing my proprioceptive and vestibular skills was the be all and end all. I heard Susan’s words but couldn’t quite grasp their meaning.

Interoception is a sense that we don’t hear much about, unless there’s a problem with it — for instance, in the case of sensory-processing issues that make it difficult to sense hunger, thirst, and temperature.

As I researched it, I found a treasure trove of information, including research related to fitness: Interoceptive awareness is increasingly cited as a tool in trauma therapy and ­injury ­rehabilitation.

It can also play an important role in prehabilitation — preventing injuries.

Beyond the promise of better performance and improved resiliency, I was enticed by sheer curiosity and began training with Susan. Gyrotonic is familiar: It has roots in yoga, tai chi, and dance, and it uses machines to accentuate movement. And it’s foreign, as I seek messages from my insides.

Exploring new rhythms and ranges of motion, I feel warmed by the thought that even after all these years, there are new physical experiences for me to discover and try.

This originally appeared as “Strong Body, Strong Mind: My Eighth Sense” in the October 2018 print issue of Experience Life.